


sun wave

by untitled but hiatus (sky_of_starflowers)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, cause i can't write sex scenes to save my life, maybe half a plot, possibly permanently unfinished, the major character death is gabriel's season 5 death, there's sex but like not in depth, up to a point because i haven't watched past gabriel's return so i'm REALLY behind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26244628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_of_starflowers/pseuds/untitled%20but%20hiatus
Summary: gabriel doesn’t understand his fascination with humanity, even after living among them for several centuries. honestly, gabriel doesn’t think he’ll ever understand humanity, let alone his fascination with it.it only gets worse after he meets sam winchester.
Relationships: Gabriel & Sam Winchester, Gabriel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	sun wave

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to a product of my writer's block! i started this back in march and i haven't done anything with it since the beginning of july, so i figured "what the hell. might as well share it"
> 
> this technically started as a character piece and then somewhere along the way there was half a plot and no ending so here we are. it follows sam and gabriel's relationship from "tall tales" to gabriel's reappearance in "the thing" (which i should warn you, i haven't actually _seen_ "the thing" so anything i have from that episode is from clips and promos

gabriel doesn’t understand his fascination with humanity, even after living among them for several centuries. honestly, gabriel doesn’t think he’ll ever understand humanity, let alone his fascination with it.

it only gets worse after he meets sam winchester.

he’s funny and honest and gabriel doesn’t stand a chance against those charms for all that there’s this blackness on sam’s soul when they first meet on a college campus, sam so young and gabriel all too aware that there’s so much pain waiting for them – not just sam but dean too, the two of them suffering together like they do everything else.

gabriel dreams of kissing sam the night sam thinks they’ve killed him.

they aren’t the first hunters to try it and they certainly won’t be the last, gabriel thinks as he watches the stake plunge into his double’s chest, blood staining the janitorial uniform. the three of them, the winchester brothers and the man they brought in for help, run out of there like the cops will show up any minute to find them standing over the body, broken chairs all around from the fight.

it’s not hard work, but gabriel thinks he deserves a good night’s sleep after maintaining that many illusions at once. he’s hardly asleep before the dreams start – he doesn’t understand why he dreams now, when he never used to when he was just an angel. he just does, and it’s another thing gabriel will never understand.

to say that gabriel simply kisses sam in the dream would be to put him to shame for his reputation as a pagan god and the many, _many_ offerings he has enjoyed in the form of sex with willing worshippers and sacrifices. oddly enough, he’s not the one who takes charge in the dream; that honor goes to sam, who hovers over gabriel’s dream form, with a smile on his young face before he sucks a hickey onto gabriel’s neck.

gabriel arches into it, the sweet pain of being marked. there’s more, of course, as his role as a pagan god is not to deny himself whatever pleasures he may want. but when gabriel wakes up the next morning, the sun already well on its way to its winter height, there is a hickey on his neck, formed in his dream and apparently important enough that gabriel’s subconscious decided to make it a temporary reality.

it stays the amount of time gabriel has seen hickies last on college students – two weeks – with all of the changes in coloration that he’s observed in bruised humans. every time he looks at it, it reminds him of his dream. he refuses to be sad once it finally fades.

news of dean winchester’s deal travels fast once it happens, and gabriel knows that it means that his taste of freedom is coming to an end. he’s fully prepared for everything to play out like it should – for dean to go to hell, for sam to cross the world to find a way to bring him back, to make deals and bargains and prayers that will fall on deaf ears – but something in him doesn’t let it go.

which is how he comes up with the mystery spot.

gabriel doesn’t understand why sam’s so upset about this since it’s inevitable that dean is going to die and sam is going to keep on living. but then he watches sam hunt him for three months in the pocket reality, and gabriel understands that sam isn’t going to change. he isn’t going to accept dean’s death and there’s nothing gabriel can do to change his mind.

so gabriel lets him out. he puts a minor blessing on them to keep asia away from sam as long as possible and to make sure that nothing too terrible happens on a tuesday.

(gabriel hears it, along with every other angel, when the hellhounds drag dean away. he also hears sam crying, but thinks nothing of it. it doesn’t occur to him that no one else would care to listen for the cries of lucifer’s true vessel.)

once the apocalypse gets going, gabriel decides that he’s ready for it. he’s ready for the empty, ready for the silence, the nothingness that awaits him after earth is no more. except there’s one minor issue: the winchesters won’t play along.

 _that just won’t do_ , gabriel thinks when he hears, and then he sends the incredible hulk to kill a man with anger issues.

it’s easy to trap them, warp their sense of time and make them play along, get them to learn the rules on the inside before they learn them on the outside. when castiel shows up, gabriel doesn’t think too much into it. he doesn’t send him far, and it’s nothing that castiel can’t handle in the long run.

the holy oil is a nice touch, gabriel is forced to admit once they light it on fire, and the boys are smarter than he gives them credit for. saying his name, his true name, for the first time in centuries almost burns him, the taste of it scalding his tongue as the power threatens to burst. there’s something in sam’s eyes, something different from their anger and dean’s disapproval, and gabriel knows it’s a really bad time for a boner, but there’s really no good time for a boner for his brother’s true vessel.

when they let him go, gabriel is surprised again. they could’ve kept him in the circle, made some deal with him to make him help them stop the apocalypse, but they just accepted his defeat and let him go.

to absolutely no one’s surprise, gabriel fucks sam in his dreams that night. he uses that anger on both of their sides, fueling his desire and making it much harsher than it was the last time he dreamed of having sex with sam. sam claws bright lines of red down gabriel’s back and squeezes bruises onto gabriel’s arms, bites his shoulder when gabriel says something snarky and on the edge of too far, even for the trickster.

gabriel wakes up to find the marks there again, bruises in the shape of sam’s hands on his biceps, a bite mark on the curve of his shoulder, and fading red lines all down gabriel’s back when he checks his back in a hotel mirror.

ian fleming might’ve said that “once is happenstance. twice is coincidence. the third time it’s enemy action,” but gabriel’s of the belief that once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. and until it happens a third time, gabriel’s going to do his best to put it out of his mind. (the marks do the same as last time, and fade as they would on a human – that is to say, naturally and over the course of several weeks.)

five months later, gabriel hears about a meeting between the gods and, after feeling left out, figures that something hinky is probably going on. it’s not hard to crash the party and, once he gets a look at the winchester boys in a room full of pagan gods, the rest of the plan’s not hard to figure out.

kali revealing that he’s an archangel is definitely not the plan. neither is facing down lucifer, but gabriel’s nothing if not flexible. he whips up the dvd as fast as possible, and makes sure he’s got some small piece of grace and consciousness tucked away in case lucifer actually manages to take him down.

dying for real? not something gabriel enjoys.

he shudders back to life days later, and something feels different about the world. it takes gabriel weeks to gather the strength to realize that the apocalypse didn’t happen. it takes even longer for him to be able to find out why.

watching sam winchester wander around soulless isn’t exactly enjoyable for gabriel, but he knows he’s still nowhere strong enough to go and try to drag sam’s soul out of the cage. he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be strong enough to face lucifer again. so he goes into hiding on a tropical island and resolves to forget about it.

as he’s being kidnapped, years later, gabriel thinks that he should’ve known it was never going to be as easy as hiding for the rest of time.

the first night he’s in hell, gabriel dreams of sam again. there’s no way for gabriel to know that it’s an accurate representation of the man, but he thinks he might be close. they’re lying in a bed together in some hotel somewhere, sam propped up on his elbow and facing gabriel.

“how’re you going to get yourself out of this one?” dream sam asks, and gabriel doesn’t have an answer. he knows that there’s not going to be any sex in this dream, not after everything and especially not when he doesn’t know how long he’s going to be in hell.

“i should’ve told you that i like you,” gabriel says, and dream sam laughs, shaking his head. gabriel doesn’t stop himself from leaning up to kiss sam, and, it being a dream, sam kisses him back.

gabriel loses his first bit of grace the next day.

it feels like an age passes in the time that gabriel’s locked up. being mouthy only got him so far, until asmodeus got fed up and had someone sew his mouth shut. it feels like the opposite of how saying his name to the winchesters felt all those years ago, like his power’s being locked away and buried deep inside. gabriel doesn’t think he could conjure a single damn thing if he tried.

leaving is scarier than gabriel expected it to be, his fear response much more violent than he thought it would be. gabriel wonders what’s happened while he’s been away as the hunter, ketch, drives them to wherever it is that they’re going.

when it turns out ketch is driving them to the winchesters, gabriel wants to laugh, but not in amusement. he wants to laugh hysterically, because it’s either that or cry. why is it, whenever something happens to him, it always leads back to the winchesters?

it’s not surprising that sam and dean had thought him dead all these years – gabriel never bothered to try to tell them otherwise after lucifer had managed to best him. it is surprising that they care so much, though.

the look on sam’s face when he sees gabriel alive is a look gabriel hasn’t seen on sam’s face in years and certainly never directed at him. (it’s a look of family coming home, of miracles being achieved, and gabriel just wants to sleep in safety.)

kissing sam in reality is just as good as kissing him in his dreams. sam’s cutting the thread from his mouth and asking him how this happened, and gabriel knows that his voice is hidden somewhere deep in his chest. it’ll be a while before it climbs up his throat and out of his mouth. but he can still move, so he shakes his head before leaning up to brush his lips against sam’s, sighing into it. he doesn’t have the energy for more, but he’s pleasantly surprised when sam returns it, just enough pressure for it to actually be considered a kiss, sam’s free hand coming up to cradle gabriel’s jaw.

unsurprisingly, sam’s the one to pull away, resting their foreheads together with a soft huff of laughter. “i should’ve known that the only time you’d actually kiss me would be when you’ve just been rescued.” gabriel’s not stupid, so he knows that sam’s not saying something that he really should be saying. he reaches out to curl his fingers around sam’s wrist, pulling back enough to give sam a questioning look that, as best he can, demands an answer.

sam rolls his eyes, muttering “bossy” under his breath with no small amount of relief in his voice. “i’ve dreamed about you, before,” and the pause as sam says “before” is like the last piece of a puzzle sliding into place, never mind that gabriel’s been trying to put this particular puzzle together for over a decade.

this isn’t something gabriel can just sit by and listen to while sam explains, so he grabs his voice and drags it out, despite the metaphorical fingers clawing on his throat to stay locked up, rasping out “when was the first time?” much to sam’s surprise.

but sam’s no fool either, so he answers gabriel. “after we thought we’d killed you, at the college,” he says, and gabriel brings a hand up to his neck, memories of a mark sucked into it and staying against all odds. sam smiles at the gesture, following the movement with his eyes. “i gave you a hickey.”

“it stayed for two weeks,” gabriel says, sounding slightly less like his vocal cords had been shredded with a chainsaw. sam blinks once, twice, his jaw falling open. gabriel shrugs a little, fully aware that he’s being a little too blasé about this. “we can keep comparing notes, but i have a feeling that i know how it’s gonna go.”

sam’s cheeks are definitely getting redder, but he nods, leaning back to put some space between the two of them. “uh, well, the second time was right after we found out you were, well, you. i, uh, i…” his voice drifts off, and gabriel feels his lips pull into a cracked smirk.

“i fucked you into the mattress and you did your damnedest to make sure i wouldn’t forget it,” gabriel says, the memory of long-fingered bruises along his arms and a bite mark on his shoulder giving him a phantom ache.

the huff sam lets out draws gabriel back, sam shaking his head. “i couldn’t sit down for almost a week after that,” he admits, and somewhere behind the glow of pride gabriel wonders how exactly any of this happened.

he sits quietly for a few moments before continuing. “i dreamed about you, the night i was kidnapped.”

sam sighs, bringing his hand up to brush his thumb along gabriel’s cheekbone. “i asked you how you were gonna get out of it and instead of answering, you kissed me.” gabriel meets sam’s eyes, quiet wonder on his face. “i thought it was weird that i’d dream about you after so long, but there you were.”

the two of them sit and just look at each other for a long minute.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: the title has absolutely nothing to do with the story


End file.
